If one of your friends are the type who are dressing up as IT Crowd characters for Halloween, keep them safe by letting them know, this week the Linux version of L4D2 has moved out of Beta into full release. If that doesn’t impress them, maybe some stats will. Did you know you are 57X less likely to drown while playing L4D2 than you are when bobbing for apples?

* NEW: The Hospital Urban map has been split into four separate maps, with HL2-style map transitions. When all living Survivors enter a checkpoint and the door is closed, the next map in the sequence will load. All items, players, and infected will retain their state across map transitions. Checkpoint doors are impervious to damage until all of the Survivors leave the Checkpoint once (with a few exceptions). The "exit" door of a Checkpoint cannot be opened until after the map transition.

* NEW: When a Survivor's health reaches zero, he no longer immediately dies but instead falls to the ground "incapacitated". While incapacitated, the victim cannot move, slowly "bleeds out", and can take additional damage from the Infected, friendly fire, explosions, etc. If a friend can reach the incapacitated Survivor before he bleeds to death, the rescuer can +use him to "help him to his feet", leaving the injured player with a small amount of virtual (blue) health. A First Aid Kit can also be used to revive an incapaciated player, healing him in the process. Incapacitated players can press their attack button to call for help, and can wave their flashlight around to help others find them. Note that traumatic damage (explosions, steep falls) still kill Survivors outright.

- Baseball Bat has been removed

It took us some iteration, but we got that baseball bat back in 3 years later.

Zander has been sitting in our office alongside the team for the last few months helping us. Today is the first update thanks to his work. Alongside the additions to the Authoring Tools that involve really technical stuff meant for fellow modders, we have added one fun bit in this update - <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=170054798">an older version of Francis</a>. We can’t promise we can get all of the other older survivors working, but we are looking into resurrecting them for forthcoming updates.

This is just the first of a few Authoring Tool updates focused on helping modders and includes:

<strong>Starter Kits:</strong>
• These are Zip files which include all the compiling files (Reference/Animation DMXs, Reference/Animation SMDs, QCs, and the VTA Morphs) used to create each Item, Weapon, Special Infected, and Survivor. In addition to providing a useful reference, these kits allow modders to start with a fully functional asset and then replace pieces incrementally instead of starting from scratch.
• These packs will also have the proper directory layout used by the game itself, so users will not have to reconstruct and look up where the model they're replacing needs to go.
• Each Starter Kit will have A COMPILE.BAT file which will need to be edited to match the user's local L4D2 install directory.

<strong>Maya Files:</strong>
These are the skeleton rigs that are used for each Item, Weapon, Special Infected, and Survivor. These allow modders to replace a model by attaching a new custom mesh skinned to the rig. Also included are all the animation scenes for the Items, Weapons, and Special Infected.

<strong>Tutorials:</strong>
In order to compile model files from SMDs and DMX, people will need to setup the SOURCE SDK TOOLS.

Celebrating Left 4 Dead 2’s official release on Linux and America’s Day of Independence, we’re putting L4D2 on sale for a stunning 75% off and it's free to play all weekend!

We know people have a busy weekend ahead of them with BBQs, sack races, blowing fingers off, and other fun summer time activities, so we made it a little more enticing to give it a try this weekend. We are making L4D2 free to play until 10am PST Monday morning.

To all our new Linux players this weekend, Hello.

To our returning players – we are bringing back a special achievement. Good Guy Nick - – “Plays games with free weekend players and helps them survive a campaign.” Who is a free weekend player? You’re going to have to talk to each other to find out or you could always let your friends know Left 4 Dead 2 is out on Linux and is free this weekend. After all, the zombie apocalypse was made to be fought with friends.

All kidding aside, it is going to be dangerous outside this weekend. Stay indoors. Play some L4D2.

<strong>Linux</strong>
The Linux conversion is ready for primetime so we are opening it up to more people and releasing it officially on Steam. This will let us get feedback on more builds and distros.

<strong>SteamPipe</strong>
Some of you may have noticed a quick update to your game last week. That was our conversion over to SteamPipe. For L4D2 it was quick and painless as our system was already using VPKs. What does this change mean? For server operators there is an easier update path and smaller downloads. For clients, we have improved the downloading experience and you can now install L4D2 on any drive. You can get more details on <a href="https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7388-QPFN-2491">the support page.</a>

<strong>Extended Mutation System.</strong>
The EMS takes the current idea of mutations and mutates it into a powerful tool for modders. They have been busy at work creating a bunch of new Mutation and game modes that will begin to be uploaded to the L4D2 workshop today. With names like Vicious Infected, Boomer Peril, Stranded, Vampirism, Plague of the Dead, Zombie Run, and Tiny Terror, there is something for everyone.

Later this week, we will highlight some of our favorites.

For now, make sure to checkout Holdout. It is a multi-map Mutation that includes the concept of resources and buildable items. It was created to showcase some of the functionality of EMS and as a byproduct, it is pretty damn fun.

You receive 4 card drops for owning L4D2. A card drop earns you the right to receive a card by playing the game. You can get four cards to drop by playing L4D2. One problem, you can only get 4 this way. To get the complete 8 you need to trade among friends or even strangers. Who knows, you might even meet your new best L4D2 friend ever trading. You two realize you have more than L4D2 in common, get married, settle down, raise a family and then complete your set when your third son earns the Spitter Card and trades it to you.

What happens when you complete all 8? You can craft an L4D2 badge and earn an L4D2 emoticon item, profile background, chance to get a discount coupon, and 100XP for your steam level.

We have seen some discussions about some of the sample Mutations with shipped with the Beta. Some of these like Holdout are fully formed game modes. Others are tests or example code for other people to play around with.

A good example is with the L4D1 Mutation. It is a sample Mutation to show how easy it is to change the game. Don’t like some of the choices? Change them. The code below is the script file for that mode – 52 lines of script. You can see how simple, yet powerful the new scripting mode is. For more information visit the <a href="https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/L4D2_EMS/Intro">L4D2 EMS Wiki.</a>

Currently, changes to L4D2 will first appear in the Beta before they appear in the main game. The Beta will change often. This mean this build is very active so you might want to avoid it if you have bandwidth caps. Today we released another update for it. You can read the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/news/10607/">release notes</a> for the update here.

While the tools are only available on Windows, everyone in the Beta can play the new EMS content.

We do not have servers running for the Beta yet as we concentrate on client issues and fixes but the server code has been released and is working - so let us know if you have any issues with Windows or Linux servers. We will be rolling out our own dedicated servers in the near future.